'Game Of Thrones' Season 7 Trailer: Four Rulers Prepare For War

We've reached the point of the year when Game of Thrones is supposed to be returning. Our bodies are ready, our minds sharp, our notebooks for keeping track of character names primed. But due to production delay necessary to film in colder weather (because winter has come and all), we still have a few months to wait. In the meantime, we can all sit back and enjoy this new Game of Thrones season 7 trailer.

Because HBO knows that they have a genuine phenomenon in Game of Thrones, they can get away with teaser trailers like this: 90 seconds of wholly original, beautifully shot footage...that also clearly won't be part of the final show and was just put together to lavishly remind you that Game of Thrones is pretty, pretty great. Remember, this is also the network that announced the season 7 premiere date by melting a block of ice with blasts of fire.

The footage itself is simple: Cersei Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, and Jon Snow (Stark?) all pace through their castles, eventually taking a seat upon their hard-won thrones. For Cersei, it's the Iron Throne at King's Landing. For Jon, it's the King in the North's throne at Winterfell. For Daenerys, it looks like the previously unseen throne in Dragonstone, which would be an ideal base of operations for a queen invading from the east.

Of course, there is the fourth king, the only one that isn't human: the Night King, whose undead forces gather along the Wall and whose intentions make the three-way war amongst the living look trivial in comparison. There may not be any actual show footage in this trailer, but it sure does get the blood pumping.

By this point, Game of Thrones is so far beyond George R.R. Martin's books that we can't even make a guess about what to expect next. We do know that this is the second-to-last season and that it will only run seven episodes. We also know that this season will probably be more of a bloodbath than usual, with the end being on the horizon and all. And oh, yeah: those dragons are going to get really big.

Game of Thrones season 7 is set to premier on July 16, 2017.